DGN Discussion Note Integrating Aadhaar and Voter ID Data: Promises and Dangers Vibhav Mariwala and Prakhar Misra Introduction Recently, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced that with the Ministry of Law & Justice, it is considering the integration of Aadhaar and Voter ID information. The idea is to remove errors from electoral rolls and to allow migrant workers to vote in elections away from 1 their homes. I​ t claims that such a unified database will eliminate duplication of entries between ​ Aadhaar and ECI. Over the course of UPA-II and Narendra Modi’s first government, Aadhaar was mandated to link with a range of government services, and such a move attracted significant opposition.2 ​ Multiple court cases, government committees and public debates, since then, have significantly shifted India’s data governance needle towards building a cogent framework on regulating technology. This brief explores the benefits and issues with the integration of voter ID data with Aadhaar, keeping the evolution of data governance in India in mind. Context This proposal first arose in 2015, which resulted in the ECI conducting voter seeding.3 However, ​ questions were raised about whether the ECI had taken voters’ consent before sharing their data with UIDAI, and the Supreme Court stopped the exercise saying that Aadhaar’s scope was limited to providing welfare benefits.4 Nonetheless, 300 million people’s data had already been ​ seeded. In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld the validity of the Aadhaar Act but struck down several key provisions. Among these was Section 33(2), which would have allowed the government to share data in the name of national security. This was important to curtail use of Aadhaar within government agencies. Notwithstanding this, the budget session of Parliament in 2020 showed that the government was pushing for integrating Aadhaar with Voter ID, similar to the voter purification exercise conducted in 2015.5 ​ 1 ‘EC Moots Linking Aadhaar with Voter ID, Law Ministry Tells LS’, The Hindu, 5 March 2020, sec. National, ​ ​ https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/ec-moots-linking-aadhaar-with-voter-id-law-ministry-tells-ls/article30992455.ece. ​ 2 Komal Gupta, ‘Opposition Questions Govt Move to Make Aadhaar Must’, Livemint, 10 April 2017, sec. politics, ​ ​ https://www.livemint.com/Politics/nwqpFParHM0Ym8F4Dwt3yL/Rajya-Sabha-debates-Aadhaar-Opposition-points-to-flaws.html .Ganesh Prabhu, ‘Aadhaar Linkage to Minority Scholarships Opposed’, The Hindu, 14 February 2015, sec. Karnataka, ​ ​ https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/aadhaar-linkage-to-minority-scholarships-opposed/article6894600.ece. ​ 3 Voter seeding is a process which involves linking Aadhaar numbers to the Election Photo ID Database as part of the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication (NERPAP), with the intention to ‘clean up’ India’s electoral rolls to prevent voter fraud. 4 Writ Petition 494 of 2012, Justice K.S.Puttaswamy (Retd) & ... vs Union of India & Ors on 11 August, 2015 5 EC Moots Linking Aadhaar with Voter ID, Law Ministry Tells LS.’ 1 Current Situation Currently, electoral data is held by the Election Commission in its own database, has its own verification process, and is separate from other government databases. The proposed linkage between the Aadhaar and election database will make data available to the ECI and UIDAI. An RTI request made by Medianama found that the ECI changes to be made to the Representation ​ of the People Act, 1950 (RP Act) involve authorising the Election Commission to request Aadhar numbers from voters to establish identity of new voters and to verify the identity of current voters. The proposed amendment also states that voters will not be disqualified should they decide not to provide their number, or are unable to do so.6 ​ In 2020, the absence of a Data Protection Law has exacerbated misuse of voter data. In Telangana’s local elections in January 2020, facial recognition was deployed as a means to verify voter identity, even though there is no explicit legal provision for allowing facial recognition technology to do so.7 The Hindu reported that the data used was allegedly taken from the State’s ​ ​ Resident Data Hub application. The 2015 Supreme Court order prohibited the collection of such information, but Telangana still used SRDH information in its local elections.8 ​ Another instance is when the Delhi Police requested the electoral rolls of Northeast Delhi to compare names and faces of potential rioters while investigating the 2020 Delhi Riots. A letter from the ECI to the Delhi Police explicitly states that sharing names and photos of voters from its electoral rolls is against its own policies, it still did so.9 While the ECI argued that it only ​ allowed for a physical inspection of voter rolls, voters' privacy was still violated without a legal mandate to do so. The exact reasons for this proposed integration are still unclear, and the justifications given by the government are ambiguous, from removing duplicates from the electoral roll, to letting migrants vote, without any robust policy proposal mentioned. Given this context, we analyse the benefits and pitfalls of such interlinking below. 6 Soumyarendra Barik, ‘Here Are the Amendments the Election Commission Wants to the Representation of the People Act for Aadhaar-Voter ID Linkage’, MediaNama, 16 September 2019, ​ ​ https://www.medianama.com/2019/09/223-rp-act-amendments-aadhaar-voter-id/ 7 Reuters, ‘Telangana Tests Facial Recognition in Local Polls as Privacy Fears Mount’, The Hindu, 22 January 2020, sec. Technology, ​ ​ https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/telangana-tests-facial-recognition-in-local-polls-as-privacy-fears-mount/article30 623453.ece 8 Aman Sethi, ‘Why State Data Hubs Pose a Risk to Aadhaar Security’, Hindustan Times, 13 March 2018, ​ ​ https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/why-state-data-hubs-pose-a-risk-to-aadhaar-security/story-Klyl3yT5MkFk6Szg2yGg 9N.html. ​ 9 EC: Said No to Police over Poll Rolls Data in Northeast Delhi Riots Probe’, The Indian Express, 25 August 2020, ​ ​ https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/ec-said-no-to-police-over-poll-rolls-data-in-northeast-delhi-riots-probe-6568509/ ‘Delhi Riots: Police Asks for Voters’ List, Doesn’t Follow Up After EC Allows Physical Viewing Only’, The Wire, 25 August 2020, ​ ​ https://thewire.in/government/delhi-police-riots-electoral-roll-election-commission-digital-database. ​ 2 Benefits of Aadhaar Integration with EPIC There are two benefits of interlinking Aadhaar with Voter-ID databases. 1. Accessible Voting for Migrant workers There have been calls to allow migrant workers to be given the right to vote regardless of their location, in order to let them participate in elections in their home states. An analysis by Business Standard and Sabrang India indicates that India lags in voter participation compared ​ ​ ​ to other large democracies, a large reason being the staggering numbers of migrant workers, at an estimated population of 300 million.10 Teesta Setalvad, secretary of Citizens for Justice and ​ Peace (CJP), has most recently argued for allowing migrant workers to vote from the states where they work, not in their home states.11 Aajeevika Bureau has also conducted extensive ​ research on migrants and their exclusion from the electoral system, calling for remote voting as well, primarily through postal ballots, not by using Aadhaar cards.12 Postal ballots are argued to ​ be robust because they already exist to ECI personnel, armed force personnel, the Prime Minister and President, and to those over the age of 80, which is why they could be extended to migrants. The government has admitted to Parliament that it lacks national level data on migrant workers and their registration information.13 Given this, it could be argued that linking the two databases ​ will allow the ECI to track migrant workers and build out its database on migrant voters, enabling their participation in elections from their places of work. 2. De-duplication of Voter IDs The ECI argues that linking these databases through an intermediate platform can help avoid duplicate voter ID cards when people move from villages to cities in search of work. Duplicate cards could, in theory, lead to significant electoral fraud or double voting. Linking the EPIC database to Aadhaar reduces duplication since Aadhaar details are collected using biometric information, which cannot be replicated.14 Consequently, this would allow migrants to vote ​ outside of their hometowns since a change in residence can be updated on their Aadhaar Card, which is used to receive benefits, which can directly update the EPIC database as well. While there have been calls to allow migrant labourers to vote, given the staggering number of such 10 ‘Over 300 Million Indians Couldn’t Vote in This Election, They Won’t Be Able to in 2024 Either,’ SabrangIndia, 23 May 2019, ​ ​ https://sabrangindia.in/article/over-300-million-indians-couldnt-vote-election-they-wont-be-able-2024-either. ​ 11 Letter from CJP to the Election Commission of India and Ministry of Law, 10 July 2020, accessed 29 September 2020, https://cjp.org.in/let-migrant-vote/. ​ 12 Amrita Sharma et al., ‘Political Inclusion of Seasonal Migrant Workers in India: Perceptions, Realities and Challenges’ (Udaipur: Aajeevika Bureau, 2012), https://www.aajeevika.org/assets/pdfs/Political%20Inclusion%20of%20Migrant%20Workers%20in%20India.pdf. ​ 13 S. Irudaya Rajan, Ashwin Kumar, and Heller Arokkiaraj, ‘The Realities of Voting in India’, Economic and Political Weekly 54, no. ​ ​ 18 (4 May 2019): 12–14. 14 Aditi Agarwal, ‘EC Will Create a Platform for Aadhaar-Voter ID Linkage: Senior Election Commission Official’, MediaNama, 19 ​ ​ February 2020, https://www.medianama.com/2020/02/223-voter-id-aadhaar-linkage-privacy-ensured-ec-official/ ​ ​ 3 workers, no proposal from civil society has called for integration of Aadhaar with EPIC.15 The ​ ECI’s argument is that this linking will let people cast votes remotely and therefore not be 16 disenfranchised.